The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (43 page)

He is either heedless or mad—for, indeed, I have heard and believed that he has been bewitched by that accursed woman.

Octavian, on Antony and Cleopatra

-Roman History

Cassius Dio (ca. 150–235 CE)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Six months have passed, but the city of Cairo is instantly familiar. I smile at the honking of horns and the faint sweet scent of smog as I step out of the airport into a whirlpool of taxi drivers.

I remember the cumbersome suitcases I was dragging when I was here six months ago. This time, a small overnight bag is slung over my shoulder. It is now January, and the weather is warm but not uncomfortably hot—a welcome change from the cauldron I endured here in July.

My hair is auburn again, and longer. Soon it will once again be down to my waist. I no longer mind the attention directed at me in the Cairo streets.

I negotiate a cab ride into the city and then catch a Metro from
Midan Tahrir
. The women in the car kindly move aside to offer me the seat closest to the doors. I smile and thank them in English, waving a weary hand before I sit down heavily. I know they understand my gratitude if not my words.

Twenty minutes later, the Metro screeches to a halt. I use the metal hand rail to heave myself to a standing position. I step out and begin walking. My limp is almost gone now, but the characteristic waddle of a woman in the end stages of pregnancy is creeping into my gait. I walk more slowly now than I used to. Yet, I am eager as I approach the destination I have traveled from San Diego to Cairo to understand. As the birth of my son approaches, it is time to face the consequences of my actions. And, hopefully, time to close this chapter of my life.

I pay my entrance fee and purchase a small street map. Then I step into the walled, ancient city of Coptic Cairo.

I am early. Slowly, I stroll through the dusty, crooked streets of the birthplace of Egyptian Christianity. Churches and convents line both sides of the streets. I wander into a church and am greeted by an ornate interior of gold and ivory. An old man is at its altar, lighting candles. I leave him alone and return to the street.

I reach into my bag and withdraw the map I purchased at the entrance to the city. I turn and continue down another street. At its end, the ancient city opens into a large pair of cemeteries, separated by a narrow walkway. One cemetery, historically, is Greek Catholic. The other is Greek Orthodox. But within them, I see a diversity I would never have imagined.

Each cemetery contains hundreds, maybe thousands of final resting places ranging from simple headstones to elaborate mausoleums. They are inscribed in Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and, occasionally, even English. Some of the monuments are centuries old, and others quite recently erected. Some of them are graced with flowers. Some with photographs.

I brush the fallen leaves off of a stone bench, shaded beneath a tall tree, and sit down to wait.

It is our second date. We step out of the Louvre, and Jeff takes my hand for the first time. I am terrified.

“Are you going to contact the chemistry teacher?” I ask. “The one who told you the bogus story of the caduceus?”

“Hell yeah!” he says. “I can’t wait to call Dr. Bond and gloat!”

I giggle and elbow him in the ribcage. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Because we are two of a kind,” he banters back and throws his arm around me as if it is the most natural of things.

We wander without speaking into the quiet solitude of the Tuileries Gardens behind the Louvre. The rain has now abated to a soft drizzle, and we walk through the garden slowly, hand in hand. At first, neither of us speaks. My eyes, always avoiding his, shift between the ground before my feet and the soft grassy area surrounding us. I feel drunk with the words echoing through my head.

We are two of a kind.

Never before have I met a man whose intellect aroused me as much as the chemistry between us. Forever skeptical of the old cliché that I would know when I met the right man, I now feel with conviction that I know. And it has only been two days. I struggle to retain my comfort zone of logic, but my heart is pounding.

We reach a large circular fountain in the center of the garden, and Jeff voices my inner thoughts exactly. “You seem too good to be true,” he says. I stop walking and am grasping for a safe response when he pulls me toward him and kisses me for the first time. And every remaining shred of my instinctive resistance dissolves.

I hear quiet footsteps, and I awaken from my daydream. She is approaching.

Her gait is light, and I am happy to see that she seems to have made a full recovery since the last time I saw her. She smiles and slowly, cautiously raises her arm to wave. It is then that I realize that her shoulder may have suffered permanent damage from the bullet that passed through it six months ago.

I stand and hug Alyssa Iacovani gently, taking care not to crush either her injured shoulder or my own swollen belly.

“Now I understand,” she says as we sit back down on the bench. “I did not know.” She smiles and looks down at my stomach.

“Neither did I!” At first, I laugh gently, but then a familiar tear wells into each eye. “I’m so glad he survived,” I say softly. “He survived a near drowning, a crocodile attack, and an emotional nightmare unlike any I have ever experienced. And he is still strong. It’s almost a miracle.”

“He?”

“Yes. The baby is most certainly a boy.”

“Jeff Junior?”

“No,” I say, and Alyssa looks surprised.

“He is all I have left of his father. But he is a different person. I don’t want to try to recreate Jeff. I want our son to be… whoever he is. I can’t wait to meet him.” My eyes are still brimming with tears, but I am smiling again.

“And that’s why you needed to see me,” Alyssa says with certainty. “You need to know if he is safe in this world.”

“I can’t step out onto my terrace without scanning the bedroom behind me for shooters,” I say. “I’m not sure if I will ever be able to again.”

“Have you considered moving out of the house?”

“I’ve thought about it. But what good would it do? If Rossi’s family has a vendetta, they will find me no matter where I go. And anyway, I can’t leave the house. My mother is next door. And there are too many good memories there. Every square inch of the house we bought together reminds me of Jeff. And I want our son to share in those memories. Except for the last one.”

The image of my husband’s dead body is still as fresh as the day I found it, but, slowly, I am becoming accustomed to that memory as a permanent fixture in my mind. I am grateful that I have years to decide just how to explain his death to our son, but our son will know that his father died a hero.

“As to your concern,” Alyssa says. “I don’t know if you will ever be safe. But I think you can probably relax. Ever since the healing properties of Vesuvium were made public, the excavations at Herculaneum have gone forth full bore—pardon the pun. The Villa dei Papiri has become to researchers what your California gold territory once was to prospectors. Everyone wants to dig. Everyone wants to know what additional surprises are hiding in those documents.”

I frown, deep in thought.

The superheavy isotope proved efficacious. But the transient phenomenon only occurred when using papyrus from Cleopatra’s era. Just enough of the precious resource had been made available to us, most of it unearthed from an ancient crocodile cemetery in the Fayoum Oasis. The isotope was only effective on the rare, new, HER2-elevated, pancreatic cluster cancer that John named Wilson’s Disease—after my husband. Jeff. John’s best friend, and Patient Zero.

I, too, cannot help but wonder—despite all that has happened—if there is still a secret lying buried in Herculaneum or elsewhere, a further explanation of what Queen Cleopatra once observed in a bouquet of nardos at a bedside in an ancient hospital.

“Since the excavations were renewed,” Alyssa continues, “the
camorra
families that were operating from within Ercolano have almost entirely been displaced. The majority of their estates have already been bulldozed to the ground to facilitate the excavations. Moreover, your friend Dante has royally fucked the Rossi crime family. His testimony, along with the testimonies of John and the homeless man, and your voice recording, has put away more than a dozen of the
camorra
bosses. And killed one of them, as you know.”

The image of a dead Carmello Rossi lying on the floor of a Naples laboratory is a striking parallel with that of Jeff on the deck of our yacht.

“By the way, whatever happened to them?”

“Who?” I ask.

“John and the homeless man.”

Suddenly, I am grinning. “Believe it or not, Aldo de Luca—the homeless man—did not accept a lump payment of the money I owed him. He preferred I help him monthly—a sort of trust fund—just until he gets back on his feet. I’ve put him up in a modest home in Naples, and I’m paying for his counseling, and his education.”

Alyssa laughs. “Oh my! Education in what?”

“Child psychology. He wants to help troubled kids, kids like he was once. He wants to see if he can stop some of them from making the same bad choices that he made.”

For the millionth time, I envision my daughter at fifteen—arrogant, angry, tortured, spiteful, and brilliant Alexis. I imagine her attempting to lie to Aldo de Luca in a counseling session.

“He will be perfect,” I say.

I do not share with Alyssa the bond that has grown over the last six months between myself and John—the only other person in the world who really understands what I have gone through. It is still far too early to tell where our friendship will lead. But something tells me that Jeff would approve.